school shooting

Kansas schools now have $10 million in state funding to use AI to detect guns. But ZeroEyes, one of the few companies offering this service, has sent police false alerts before — and it won't say how often.

The beginning of this school years was "a rough couple of weeks," said John Calvert, the director of the Kansas Department of Education's Safe and Secure Schools Unit. School shooting responders must learn from mistakes of the past, he said.

Missouri State Highway Patrol has received 102 tips about school shooting threats since July 1. Schools around the Kansas City area have increased security in response to a wave of threats.

The return to school often comes with threats of school violence, which spike in the aftermath of high-profile attacks. Schools around the Kansas City metro have received a raft of threats that have prompted safety precautions and led to multiple arrests.

In response to mass school shootings like the one in Uvalde, Texas, Kansas City Public Schools administrators began talking about adding armed officers to elementary schools. But many parents opposed the idea, citing research showing that officers would only increase expulsions and criminal referrals.

Lawmakers in Jefferson City did not take up any gun restrictions during the 2023 legislative session, despite pleas from students affected by the south St. Louis school shooting. Two people, a 15-year-old sophomore and a health teacher, were killed, seven others were injured, and hundreds were left traumatized.

Sen. Lincoln Hough, R-Springfield, expressed unease with the measure so soon after a deadly school shooting in Nashville.

The shooter, a 28-year-old, is also dead, police said. The shooting occurred at The Covenant School, a private religious school in Nashville.

A $2 million grant will provide software for 26 rural school districts around the state to use software to look for signs of trouble to help prevent school violence.

On the first day of prefiling, both state Democrat and Republican legislators proposed measures to increase school security.

Hundreds of people gathered at the Cathedral Basilica on Monday to honor Jean Kuczka, the teacher who lost her life last week when a gunman shot her and a student during an attack at the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in south St. Louis. “The world is truly a better place because of Jean,” said her son Stephen Kuczka Jr.

Family members of the gunman who killed two and wounded several others during a shooting rampage at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School recently asked police to take a gun from the home, interim St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief Michael Sack said Wednesday. They also had been monitoring his mental health and helped him get treatment and medication.